Bannack Portraits

This week, I had the amazing opportunity to go to Bannack, a ghost town in Montana. We spent the entire day shooting. I got some pretty cool shots that I’m really proud of.

Here are my favorite portraits.

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This first shot is my favorite. I love the drama. My lovely model looks very elegant. The staircase and the red dress complete the look. I set up the model on this staircase with a bit of natural lighting coming from a window on the right, but my primary light source is coming from a continuous auxiliary light on the left. In editing, I cropped the image quite a bit. I also did a lot of dodging and burning for several different areas–to exaggerate the natural folds of the dress, to enhance the model’s face, and to change the lighting of the whole image a little.

I love the minimalism of this portrait. I used auxiliary lighting and a trigger. Once again, I used a lot of dodging and burning to enhance the lighting on my model. I also warmed up the image, but masked out the background because I liked the tone of the wall.

This image felt a bit risky for me. I was actually using the same auxiliary light as the last photo, but for some reason, I got several images where the light didn’t go off. I thought I lost several good shots. However, when I was looking back at my photos later, I loved this photo. I think the darkness makes it more dramatic and mysterious. In editing, I used dodging and burning to accentuate the small amount of light there already was.

Once again, I like the drama and simplicity of this photo. I used a speed light and some natural light for this one. It really didn’t need a lot of editing, so I just played around with the temperature of the photo and dodging and burning a bit.

I used a continuous auxiliary light for this photo as well. In editing, I lowered the saturation a bit, but masked out her lips to keep them bright red. Then finished up with a little bit of dodging and burning.

The original of this photo was very blown out. I pulled it into Lightroom to darken the sky a bit and bump up the vibrance.

4 thoughts on “Bannack Portraits”

These shots are very good. I am glad you posted them! I love the group shot with the cowboys and cowgirl it tells a story and it makes me think where they are taking her. Keep shooting awesome shots like these!

Nikki! These are so good! You have very constant lighting control in all of these images! That first one on the stairs you did a great job and made sure to not get the railing’s shadow on her face! You’re darker lite indian photo is awesome! With that many people using the same flash it will have hiccups every now and then trying to recharge and keep up with all the shutters. But I think it looks better with the dramatic lighting. So yay for happy accidents 😛